leave Rangers defenseman Adam Fox<\/a> and Stars winger Jason Robertson at home, to keep the 4 Nations roster mostly intact despite its failure to win a championship, and to build a four-line team with an emphasis on roles all came under heavy criticism.<\/p>\nRegarding Fox and Robertson in particular, there has been plenty of questioning already not just among fans but in NHL circles. Fox suffered the ignominy of being passed up not once, but twice, with Jackson LaCombe getting the nod over him as an injury replacement after Seth Jones went down.\u00a0<\/p>\n
2026 WINTER OLYMPICS<\/p>\n
Guerin, on a Zoom with reporters minutes after Team USA\u2019s roster was announced, denied that Fox\u2019s high-profile error on McDavid\u2019s game-winner was the reason behind his exclusion, saying, \u201cIf you think we made a decision on one play, then you must not think we\u2019re very smart.\u201d<\/p>\n
One play is overstating it, but it does not take a genius to understand that the 4 Nations underpinned every decision that Guerin and the management group that includes Chris Drury, Tom Fitzgerald, Bill Zito, Stan Bowman, Chris Kelleher and John Vanbiesbrouck made in constructing this roster.<\/p>\n
That includes Fox, who struggled not only in overtime of the final but throughout the tournament, irreparably bruising his standing in the process.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Team United States takes part during training on day two of the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympic games. Getty Images<\/p>\n
If 4 Nations was the primary factor in convincing Guerin to keep Fox off the Olympic roster, it played just as big a role in so much of the group reuniting in Milan.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe process before [4 Nations] was long, the list was much bigger,\u201d Guerin said. \u201cThen it just goes over a series of meetings and needs, wants, changes, new players that have kind of emerged. All sorts of things like that but it\u2019s all just to check boxes and make sure we have all situations covered. We\u2019re not splitting the atom.\u201d<\/p>\n
Head coach Mike Sullivan of Team United States speaks to the team during training. Getty Images<\/p>\n
That roster was together for barely over a week, but the chemistry came immediately. To understand Guerin\u2019s process, you must first understand the importance he placed on that.<\/p>\n
Even the new faces on the roster \u2014 Clayton Keller, Tage Thompson, LaCombe and, technically, Quinn Hughes \u2014 have plenty of connections with the rest of the team.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a history with a lot of those guys together,\u201d Guerin said. \u201cThey\u2019re no strangers to each other. \u2026 I think their desire to win, their willingness to accept whatever role they\u2019re asked to play. All those things play into chemistry.\u201d<\/p>\n
There is another factor, too, though Americans are careful in how they phrase it publicly: the belief that they could, or even should, have beaten Canada in the 4 Nations final, when goaltender Jordan Binnington\u2019s heroics in overtime stopped Team USA from a historic victory.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe margins were very, very slim,\u201d Team USA captain Auston Matthews said. \u201cIt\u2019s a bounce either way.\u201d<\/p>\n
It would be a gross oversimplification to say Guerin isn\u2019t betting on skill. But he is betting as well on lessons learned over a life in hockey: that chemistry matters, that having four lines matters, that physicality and defined roles and playing a 200 \u2014 err, 196.85 \u2014 foot game matters.<\/p>\n
A little over two weeks from now, that is the bet on which he will be judged.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MILAN \u2014 We usually let it go unsaid, but part of the reason the story of 1980 and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":451830,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5118],"tags":[5,161,38,5280,4,2602,43,3255,162,2787,31286],"class_list":{"0":"post-451829","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-minnesota-wild","8":"tag-hockey","9":"tag-minnesota","10":"tag-minnesota-wild","11":"tag-minnesotawild","12":"tag-nhl","13":"tag-olympics","14":"tag-sports","15":"tag-team-usa","16":"tag-wild","17":"tag-winter-olympics","18":"tag-winter-olympics-2026"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116038804639416366","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/451829","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=451829"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/451829\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/451830"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=451829"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=451829"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=451829"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}